August Rose
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: Five secrets Azula kept, and one she didn't.


**august**_ rose_  
(five secrets azula kept, and one she didn't.)

* * *

i.

She was not supposed to be there. Princesses were supposed to stay locked up tight in their rooms during storms, safe in the palace where nothing and no one could hurt them. But she had never been a normal princess.

Before the storm started, she had sneaked out her window and crawled across the roofs to reach a poorly-kept park just off the red-light district. Fascinated with all things forbidden, she had slipped through the crowded streets, listening avidly to the catcalls and the jeers and the propositions, looking through the windows to see men with scantily-clad women in their laps, drinking tall mugs of amber liquid. It was amazing.

And then the rain started.

Instead of shrieking and running for cover like she should have, she continued to walk the thinning streets, watching the lightning fork across the sky and thread through the clouds. _Beautiful_, she thought, _so beautiful_. She could control lightning -- or, she would be able to someday. A prodigy, they called her, a bender of immeasurable power. Lightning was the ultimate weapon, the unstoppable force that only the most powerful of firebenders could use -- and she _wanted_ it.

She raised a hand and traced the clouds, watching the flickers of purple and white, imagined dragging a bolt of lightning out of the clouds and down through the sky, towards a person or a place. Uncle and Mother both insisted that she shouldn't rush into learning such dangerous bending, that she should be patient and take her time.

Azula had never been patient. She stood at the edge of the street, looking through the sheets of rain at a dingy alleyway, a drunken man slumped in the far corner. He would be a good test subject, she figured. If he'd been left in a back alley on the wrong side of town in a storm like this, he surely didn't have too many people who would wonder where he'd gone. They'd probably thank her.

She looked back up, a seed of guilt settling hard in her stomach. Even if she could do this -- and according to all the teachings, she shouldn't be able to -- she would be hurting, probably killing, a completely oblivious and most likely innocent man. Uncle would have been horrified at her for even considering it.

She set her jaw, spite threading through her veins. Uncle would scoff at her for daring to try, but would encourage Zuko. Just like Mother. They both kept telling her to hold back, while urging Zuko forward. They cared about Zuko. Worried about Zuko. Taught and teased and loved Zuko. But Azula they were wary around, never natural and free and happy with her. They treated her like a porcelain doll, fragile and small and easily breakable. She would show them.

The sky was alive with light, and the air shook with thunder. The seven-year-old girl -- the firebending prodigy, the sages called her; the _monster, _a voice in the back of her head, sounding eerily like Mother, whispered -- raised her hand to the clouds.

The news reports would say it had struck the lightning rod on the building behind him, that the bolt traveled through the roof and down the drainpipe, that it was just the terrible luck of the man to be leaning against the metal drainpipe. They would say that it was a horrible, horrible accident. That there was nothing anyone could do.

On the other side of town, snuggled under her silk covers, wet hair still plastered to her head, Azula smiled.

* * *

ii.

When her mother disappeared, she laughed at Zuko. She called him a baby while he pretended -- fiercely, angrily, haughtily -- not to cry. She told him all the horrible things that probably happened to her, the way traitors get tortured and the way she probably cried and how she must have screamed, how it must have _hurt._

She fills his head with images of his -- _their_ -- mother suffering. All -- because -- of -- him. All because of Zuko. She taunted him until he turned on her, fury and pain livid on his face, and snarled, "You sadistic _bitch_, she was your mother too, and she would have done the same thing for you."

Outwardly, she simply shrugged and laughed and walked away, but something inside of her cracked when he said those words. She had spent so long convincing herself that her mother had hated her, feared her, thought she was a monster -- but Zuko's words rang painfully true.

Mother had been a kind, loving woman.

That night, she stood at the window and stared hard into the stars, searching for some kind of sign that Zuko was wrong, that her mother wouldn't have cared enough about Azula to sacrifice herself. The stars stayed stubbornly blank.

Alone in her room, underneath the clearest of skies, Azula cried.

* * *

iii.

The night after Zuko's fateful Agni Kai, she slipped into his room at the infirmary. He was out cold, bandage plastered over half of his face, hair shorn off. He looked pitiful, laid out under the starched white blankets, pale and drawn and unconscious.

She took the seat beside the bed and looked into his face. They looked very similar, he and her, the same sharp, aristocratic nose, the same high cheekbones, the same arching eyebrows. Well, eye_brow_ in Zuko's case. She tried to laugh. To find his pain funny, or at least intriguing.

But she couldn't. He just -- he looked so _small_ and... And he had been in so much pain. It was hard to think of him as a traitor, a failure. All she could see was the brother who had snuck her an extra cookie when she'd been ill and who used to drag her out to play games with him and his friends when they needed another player. And the thought that he would be gone soon, probably never to return...

Deep inside her chest, something ached. Not powerfully, but enough.

"You're stupid, you know," she whispered, leaning closer to him, close enough that she could hear his shallow, ragged breathing. "You shouldn't have said anything."

But he had. And because of that, she would take his place, become the Fire Lord instead of him. He would have been a good Fire Lord, anyone could see that. And she wasn't sure of herself, if she could do it or not. She allowed herself a moment of indecision, of insecurity, before she stood up and walked purposefully toward the door. No more questioning, she decided. She was going to be Fire Lord, after all, she couldn't afford to let stupid things like injured brothers give her pause.

At the door, she hesitated for one moment, glanced behind her, and whispered, "I'm sorry," so softly that even she barely heard it. A breeze swept in through the window and carried her words away before they reached Zuko.

She did not look back again.

* * *

iv.

The first day she woke up in prison, she didn't know where she was. All she knew was that she was cold, and there were chains on her wrists, and she was alone, and --

A scream ripped through her lungs and out of her throat before she could stop it. A terrified, lonely scream.

No one came running, like she expected to. Just a few catcalls down the way, a breath of raucous laughter, a jeer. She closed her eyes and tried to remember where she was, what had happened... The day of the comet, the feeling of pure, raw _power_ surging through her veins, her coronation -- Zuko -- a pair of blue eyes -- the cold rush of water around her shoulders -- fire bursting from her lips --

Everything was hazy, and she wasn't sure where memory ended and fantasy began. The water, why would there be water at an Agni Kai? Why did she remember blue eyes? When did she end up in prison? She tried to think back, but the last clear thing she remembered seeing was white fur against an ashen sky.

Clearly, she had lost, somehow. And Zuko had been there, which meant that he was probably now the Fire Lord, or would be soon. If she could slip the chains on her wrists and escape, she could probably meet up with a few loyalists who could help put her on the throne where she belonged. It felt good to have a plan again, even a feeble one. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, calming the raging fire within. She would need to think clearly if she wanted to succeed at any part of this.

For a moment, though, a tiny part of her wondered why she couldn't just _stay _here. Life would be easy. No one would expect anything of her. No one would betray her or plot things behind her back. They may hate her, or call her names, but they would do it to her face, and Azula could take anything so long as she saw it coming.

Her eyes snapped open. No. No, she couldn't be thinking like that. The throne was _hers, _Zuko had given it up when he'd bowed at Father's feet and begged for mercy, when he'd been outcast and exiled. _She _was supposed to be the Fire Lord, not him.

It was hard to ignore, though. She was so _tired._ That little niggling voice in the back of her head had a point -- prison life would be so much simpler than Fire Lord life. And then she realized that, unless she escaped, she would never be allowed to firebend, ever again.

She screamed again, this time with rage.

* * *

v.

It took her three years to craft her escape plan and set it in motion. Three years of playing the insane ex-princess, of dumping medication whenever and wherever possible, of smiling bitterly at Zuko when he came to visit, of ignoring her old friends entirely when they came by. Three years.

She was a woman, now, of marrying age in most cultures. She had blossomed -- finally -- and more than a few of the inmates had taken to looking her over during communal visits. Instead of attacking them, as the guards clearly expected, she had shown off, preened a bit, let them see their fill. It was a bit intoxicating to see the hunger in their eyes, to know that she had so much power over them. Disgusting, but intoxicating.

When she escaped, she thought that she would find some poor, stupid farm boy and seduce the living _daylights_ out of him, just to prove that she could. She imagined what it would taste like, how deliciously wonderful it would feel to break someone's heart so completely.

In another life, she figured, she could have been a monstrous whore.

She used her looks to her benefit as part of her escape plan. She had been acting _so _good lately, so sweetly vacant and wonderful, that the guards relaxed around her, in spite of Zuko's constant insistence that they watch her like a hawk. Using her newly-found wiles, she got the guard to allow her a little extra time out of her cell, after all the other prisoners had gone. She convinced him that he _really_ wanted to be alone with her, so he sent his friends away, a leering smirk dancing on his face.

Alone in the prison yard, she pulled the guard closer, whispering in his ear about how _very_ handsome he was, how desperately she _needed _him, _wanted _him, _oh Agni just like that a little closer oh yes _-- His pants were around his ankles and his fingers were in places she wasn't quite sure she wanted them to be. She wrapped her legs around him, slid her chained wrists around his neck, and then -- _oh._

A vicious, righteous anger welled up inside of her. He moved too quickly, got too far, before she had a chance to --

With a single move, she used her wrists to break his neck. He didn't even have time to scream, a perfect, clean kill. Flushed with fury and success and something else she couldn't quite name, she shoved the now-dead guard off of her, re-arranged her pants, and pulled the keys off of his belt loop. Once unchained, she stretched, felt the power and strength returning to her limbs, the heady taste of freedom on her tongue.

Seconds before she jetted off -- literally -- she paused to contemplate the half-naked guard. With a sneer she didn't quite feel, she kicked him _hard_ in his still-exposed genitals. Even though he couldn't feel it, the action gave her a sick sense of satisfaction. Before the rest of the guard's friends returned, she set off for the sky and the future.

She decided not to go through with her seduction plan.

* * *

vi.

Upon her escape, she made for the outskirts of the kingdom, to the places more likely to resent the end of the war, the best chance of finding a rebellion willing to help her on her way back to the throne she deserved. She found herself in a little inn in a little town by a little river, sipping warm ale and pretending to be a nobody.

On the other side of the room, a beautiful dark woman was sitting with a small group of young children, laughing, telling a story. Azula leaned on her palms and watched.

The woman's clear blue eyes met hers, and widened in horror.

Azula remembered -- the Agni Kai -- the cold rush of water -- the woman who had beaten her on the day she had been at her strongest.

Azula smiled.

* * *

**A/N**: I wrote this as a deliberate challenge to myself. I thought "If I can write Bellatrix, I can _damn well _write Azula. The hardest part was remembering how very _young_ Azula is, and I'm not entirely sure I succeeded in that bit... Oh well. I always thought that it was a really dumb idea to leave Azula alive. I mean, yeah, she goes crazy, but I firmly believe that the state she's in at the end of the series isn't permanent. Also, I am not continuing this. The _last_ thing I need is yet another half-finished novel-length fic lounging around on my profile.


End file.
